


Through Others, We Become Ourselves

by orphan_account



Series: wordverse.gif [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Erisol Week 2016, F/M, Love Confessions, M/M, Online Relationship, Weddings, look at me.... i love erisol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:38:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8510149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Your brother was getting married. 
That was fun, you guessed, going to sit at a reception wherein you hear him and Latula recite some vows. After that, you’d only go to a few more events and then dick around Italy. 
Preferably, dick around Italy with your internet chum who was supposed to live nearby. He was short and irritable and he dyed his hair far too often and wore clothing far, far too expensive that he had forced his forty-six year old sugar daddy to buy, but he was your friend or some shit, and you respected him well enough. 
(That was a lie, you held zero respect for the guy).





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gannonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gannonic/gifts).



> look at me. look at me. 
> 
> i'm the captain now. 
> 
> (of erisol.) 
> 
> [here's my personal blog.](http://luciferslittlekitten.tumblr.com/)  
> [here's my writing blog.](http://gods--among--us.tumblr.com/)  
> 

 

_**WORDS:** Valkyrie, symmetry, lonesome, crescent, embossed, wheatgrass, Pluto, vineyard _

  
\---

 

Your brother was getting married.

That was fun, you guessed, renting a tux and buying a plane ticket and taking a week off of work just to sit at a reception wherein you hear him and Latula recite some vows. After that, you’d only go to a few more events and then dick around Italy.

Preferably, dick around Italy with your internet chum who was supposed to live nearby. He was short and irritable and he dyed his hair far too often and wore clothing far, _far_ too expensive that he had forced his forty-six year old sugar daddy to buy, but he was your friend or some shit, and you respected him well enough (that was a lie, you held zero respect for the guy).

Eridan Ampora was, to put it lightly, fucking pathetic.

The guy had hopped from sugar daddy to sugar daddy ever since graduating art school, and he hadn’t been able to tie one down since his last one left him for some other eye candy. He didn’t want to work (maybe that was why he'd gotten a fucking art degree of all things), which was his main issue, and never stopped complaining.

You really don’t know how you got in contact with him. Something about your friend Karkat meeting some guy at his bar with his brother and his brother’s boyfriend or whatever having his own brother who Karkat knew and supposedly he went to highschool with you guys and had moved to his birth mother’s country, Italy, after graduation. One day, word got back around that Karkat’s brother’s booty call’s (or boyfriend’s) brother needed help with something techy and Karkat called upon you to help him.

So you helped him and you talked and it was a pretty nice conversation. You didn’t necessarily hate him until you began talking on a regular basis because Eridan was apparently shitty as all hell with computers and you were pretty damn great with them.

Stuff happened, you started Skyping him, and eventually, you began to hate him less and you became closer as friends. You played games together, some nights seriously, and other nights you fucked around on Club Penguin or Toontown.

He was very pretty, that was one of the first things you noticed about him when he turned on his camera to video chat you for the first time. Sure, you’d seen pictures, but seeing him moving and talking and knowing that it was real was just so much better.

You didn’t tell him an awful lot about yourself, but he told you everything about himself. About his brother, his father, his school years and how things were on a daily.

And then one night he proposed you guys had cyber sex, which was fun.

And that spurred some weird off-on relationship where the two of your sexted but still talked as bros and were in some weird spot between being boyfriends and being just friends because you knew he still lived with a man near twice his age ready to shower him in cash and you also knew that he sometimes said some pretty romantic-and-not-strictly-sexual things before he hung up and you were, all in all, pretty confused about the whole thing. It was like you were a step ahead of friendship but a step behind dating.

And that weird feelings stuff all happened the month before the wedding, and you had planned stay with him a long time previous, and so it was too late to cancel just for sake of saving yourself from the inevitable awkwardness.

 

\---

 

You didn’t know where Eridan was. You’d lost him in the crowd or something, apparently, because he was nowhere to be seen. You thought about calling out to him, but you doubted he’d respond. He’d been pissy with you since last night.

“Sollux?”

You turned around. You were holding a glass of dessert wine, which was way too sweet in your opinion. Eridan probably liked it, though, wherever he was.

“Oh. Terezi. Hey,” you gave her a small wave and she grinned, tugging a man in a suit similar to yours away from his position examining the refreshments table and pulling him up to her side. He stumbled and caught himself with a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh. Hey, Sollux,” Karkat said, “Where’s Ampora?”

“Yeah, where’s fishdick? You’ve talked about him so much, I wanna meet him!” Terezi exclaimed.

“I don’t talk about him _that_ much,” you muttered, and the two of them gave you varying expressions of disbelief. You scoffed and shrugged indifferently, “Oh, fuck off. He’s around. Dunno, really, he ran off.”

“Sounds like him." 

"Tell me about it," you muttered, "How's Latula, Terezi?" 

"Stressed," Terezi said simply, shrugging, "This is the least 'chillaxed' I've ever seen the chick. Porrim made a joke about you and Mituna's dumb ties, and Latula was honest-to-god comtemplating getting Mituna a new tie last minute 'cause it wasn't the right shade of blue." 

"Our ties aren't dumb," you replied, offended. They were matching, opposing colors of blue and red, and had the script of The Bee Movie printed on them in really tiny font.

“They're kinda dumb, dude,” Karkat said, “Well, are you excited to be the best man?”

You rolled your eyes. “We already had the bachelor party, Karkat, so the fun part is over.”

“Oh, yeah, how was the bachelor party? The bachelorette party was _insane!”_

You and Karkat shared a look. He looked almost desperate. You were certain Terezi wouldn’t care _that_ much, but it took everything you had not to laugh at him and spill the beans. “It was… something, that’s for sure,” you settled on and she cackled.

“Bet’cha we had more fun.”

“You’re on, Pyrope.”

 

\---

 

“So,” he told you, and he hadn’t offered to take your luggage or anything as you stepped into his loft for the first time, “I guess you can sleep on the couch. Unless you want to sleep with me, that is.”

You snorted. “We’ll see how I’m feeling tonight, babycakes.”

And he narrowed his eyes at you and scoffed snobbishly. “Don’t call me that.”

“Terribly sorry, buttercup,” and you felt satisfied when he glared at you.

The awkwardness was surely there, but as long as you didn't talk about your strange relationship, he probably wouldn't bug you about it.

“Where should I put this, cutesykins?” you asked and he jerked his hand vaguely.

“Just set it wherever. My room, if you plan to stay there, lemondrop.”

You tossed your duffel onto the couch and retracted the handle of your suitcase. “Why, thank you, angel.”

“Don’t mention it, sugarbear,” he narrowed his eyes at you. You weren’t sure how long the two of you could continue dropping passive aggressive pet names, but it didn’t seem like it would end shortly.

He shot you a last look and grabbed your bag from the couch, walking down the tiny hall to his room and you followed, carrying your suitcase. You set it by the door and he placed your bag on top of it.

“Make yourself at home,” he said, perhaps begrudgingly, “I’m going to start a load of laundry.”

You hung on the doorframe as he leaves the room, calling after him, “Can you get me something to drink while you’re at it, sweetums?”

He stopped dead-center of the hallway and spun right on his heel, hands on his hips, to glare at you.

“Sollux, you’ve just got here, and you’re already actin’ like you own the damn place-,” he started, about to get all riled up and prissy on you like he always did. He started using big words you didn't think he understood enough  but he used anyways to sound smart and occasionally he went off in Italian if he was really pissed and he huffed and puffed and pouted.

He threw the biggest tantrums in the world over the dumbest shit and you loved driving him to his breaking point. You weren't about to tell him that you found it kinda cute if not a little annoying. At least, you didn't in English. Sometimes you'd mumble late night nothings, romantic or sexual or both, in Chinese and he seemed to eat those up like candy.

You rolled your eyes. “ED.”

He broke off midway through a ranty sentence and asked harshly, “What?”

“Shut up.”

Then he only yelled louder.

 

\---

 

You fingered the golden  embossed  envelope with a  crescent  seal of a similar color inviting you (and a plus one) cordially to the wedding of Mituna Captor and Latula Pyrope.

Currently, your plus one in question was trying to decide which one of his ties to wear to a wedding that was two days away. Yours was red, in order to match your brother’s blue, and Eridan was debating on which shade of purple (or, no, _violet,_ excuse you) would look better on him.

“Babe,” you told him, and he stiffened a bit at the casual use of the nickname. It felt a little weird saying it, honestly, it wasn’t a title you were used to saying aloud. It was so much different saying something like that in text or in the afterglow of cybering. It only highlighted how awkward your relationship really was.

“Don’t call me that,” he responded perhaps a few seconds too late to be considered natural or fluid, “And this is a special occasion for you, so I’m trying to look nice. Can’t you understand ‘looking nice,’ Captor?”

You rolled your eyes. “Understand it plenty. Now, look are we going out to eat or what?”

He shrugged and strung both of the ties back up on their assigned hangers. “Let me do my hair,” he murmured, then slinked away into the bathroom, leaving you to spend roughly ten minutes sitting in his cushy chair, dicking around on your phone. You would’ve played a game, but you had to delete nearly every single one of your non-essential apps because you had almost no storage on your phone and you were too lazy to clear out your photos.

Eventually, Eridan decided to hurry the fuck up and then had the audacity to yell at you to hurry up when you were putting on your shoes.

You were dressed casually, going to a rather casual restaurant, on a rather casual date. It was weird, sitting across from Eridan Ampora and buying him drinks even though the guy could barely handle even one glass of wine. It was weird because even though you’d drank together while you Skyped and had drunkenly watched shitty comedy movies together and fucking nearly pissed yourself laughing, now you were across from him, and now he picked at his plate and you could see him critically staring at the menu and calorie counting even though you knew for a fact that was the last thing he needed to worry about. (He was stupidly healthy. You drank Mountain Dew and coffee to sustain yourself while he drank goddamned  wheatgrass  . You didn’t even know what wheatgrass was until he told you.)

The conversation was strained if anything. Vaguely, you wondered if the two of you were only two halves of a whole on the internet, because you were both really distant from each other in real life. You hid it, of course, with shitty jokes and even shittier pet names, but the strain was there. A constant rift between the two of you that’d been made, funnily enough, by Eridan wanting to have cyber sex with you.

You didn’t know why that had made things so complicated.

Sex was simple. What was not simple was the way that the two of you reacted to the sex in question.

 

\---

 

Terezi had to run after an emergency wedding dress fiasco with her sister, and she had tugged a begrudging Karkat with her. You were trying to find somewhere quiet to sit and somewhere where Eridan could easily find you and drag his ass sorry back over to your side. He was only your plus one, he shouldn’t know any of these people.

The wedding was being hosted in an outdoor venue, and it was pretty nice-looking, if you  were being honest. Though it was pretty hot and you were a bit terrified you were going to sweat through your suit, it was a very pretty day for a wedding.

You still hadn’t seen Eridan at all since you parted ways at the door. He’d turned his stupid, perfect nose up at you and stomped away like a bratty child, and you’d watched him go without a thought in your mind of following him.

Okay, well, maybe you wanted to follow him a little bit.

You went to go get another glass of the gross dessert wine when you felt something drip on your hand. You wiped it off on your slacks, then looked around in confusion. Nothing was dripping, it seemed, so you just took it as, like, precipitation or something.

You poured yourself another glass, took a sip, cringed at the taste, then took another sip. You felt something else drip down your nose.

_Jesus. How badly am I sweating?_

“Sollux!”

You felt yourself being spun around and you were suddenly met by a grinning Mituna, bangs swept out of his face.

“Can you believe it, lil bro?” he asked in disbelief, “I’m getting fucking _married.”_

You snorted. “Wanted to believe it was a joke when I got the invitation. I feel so bad for Latula.”

He punched you in the shoulder and your drink sloshed threateningly around in its glass. You set it down to avoid accidents.

“She’s gonna look so beautiful, Sololo,” he said, and he talked about her so dreamily you couldn’t even reprimand his use of a stupid nickname.

“I bet she is,” you agreed, “I’m happy for you, Mituna. Don’t mess it up, okay? I don’t want to see any bad marriages from my friends and family, got it?”

“I’ve got read receipts on, don’t worry, bro. I’m going to make this last forever. You’re going to be an uncle someday, and then a great uncle, and…”

You held out a hand. “One thing at a time, Mituna.”

He took a deep breath then blew it out as a raspberry. “Okay. You’re right. Take it easy.”

“Attaboy,” you nodded, picking up your drink to take another sip.

“Where’s your plus one? Ampora’s brother?”

“Ran off. We got into a little bit of a fight last night.”

“Sounds like an Ampora.”

“He’s only Cronus’ half-brother, you know. You can't hate him forever. Only I can hate Eridan." 

“Same difference!” he waved his hand flippantly. Mituna’s feud with Cronus Ampora had stretched a span of nearly a decade. They were passive-aggressive friends on Facebook and followed each other on Instagram just to make a point of never liking the other’s pictures. It was kinda childish, but you supposed that you, under your glass roof, shouldn’t be throwing stones.

“Just saying. We just got into a fight and things got a bit tense is all.”

He hummed empathetically. “Relationship issues? I can help, if you’d like.”

“No, we’re not dating.”

He raised an eyebrow so skeptically at you that it slid up behind his bangs. “You aren’t?”

“Nope. Surprise, surprise.”

He glanced behind you, then looked at you again. “Well, I definitely think you should go after him. I know you’ve got trust issues-,”

“I do not."

“ _But,”_ he stressed, “you’ve gotta try and work through those to be truly happy, y’know? I’m just saying, lil bro. I think you should try and talk it over with him.  Pluto’s  not a planet anymore because Pluto waited too long to call himself one.”

“Mituna, that makes no fucking sense-,”

“Hey, shut up. I’m gonna go now, Kurloz wants me to meet someone.”

He waved at you, though his squinting eyes were fixed somewhere just past you, and walked away. You watched him go, then glanced behind you, but there wasn’t anyone notable around.

 

\---

 

Eridan could cook like a motherfucker.

The third night you were there, the night before the wedding, he made you spaghetti. Maybe it was only because you asked (“Look, cannoli fucker, if you’re so proud of your nationality, why not make me some goddamn pasta?”), but it was damn good. Stereotypically, perhaps, but he was a pretty good cook when he tried.

He made you do the dishes, though, which you complained about even though it was a rather fair trade-off.

That night, you watched a movie. A shitty B-list movie that you both picked apart. You weren’t cuddling by any means, but your arm was draped over the back on the couch so he could comfortably lay his head on your shoulder.

“Sol?” he said, “I… We should talk.”

Boom. There were the words.

“About what?” you answered nonchalantly, eyes fixated on the screen, “We’re in the middle of a particularly heart-wrenching scene here, ED. Hottie with the tattoos is about to find out her boyfriend’s cheating on her.”

He sighed and grabbed the remote off of your lap, sitting up and forcing you to readjust as he paused the movie.

“I’m serious, Sol.”

“Alright, fine,” you sighed, “What do you wanna talk about?”

“Us.”

“It’s pronounced U-S.”

“Not your damn country, stupid, _us_ . Our _relationship.”_

“I know, Eridan,” you rolled your eyes, “do you think I’m dumb?”

“I don’t think you wanna hear the answer to that,” he crossed his arms over his chest, flopping back against the couch and looking away from you, “Look, just- what are we, exactly?”

“Friends?”

“Just friends?”

“I-,” you cut yourself off, blinked once, then looked at him. His eyes were sliding over to you, but he glanced away when he saw you staring. It was like an obscure staring contest. “I don’t know.”

“Do you wanna be just friends?” was the follow-up question from him, and you felt like you were in a box, because dating was hard but friendship after a talk like this would be insanely strained.

“I don’t know,” you repeated, shaking your head a little.

He let out a particularly pouty breath. “I just want to know how you feel about me. Are we only ever going to be hookups?”

“I don’t really…” you trailed off, because you didn’t get it, and you didn’t know how to explain your emotions, “I don’t know,” you said again, uselessly.

“Is there anything you _do_ know?” he snapped, his shoulders tightening up. You knew that meant he was anxious.

“Eridan, I don’t know, okay? Can’t you take that as an answer?”

“Can’t you take us serious?” he retorted, “Take _me_ seriously?”

“ _You_ seriously?” you repeated incredulously, “You’re the one shouting at me like a child wanting validation I can’t give you!”

“You can’t give me validation for what? A relationship? Is the only thing you can dish out your fucking dick, Sol?” he shouted, and stood up, and he was being melodramatic for a semi-valid reason now.

“That’s a big commitment, you know! I can’t make a decision like that in the blink of an eye!”

“Then how come you’re so quick to refuse me?”

“This isn’t a goddamn refusal, Eridan, I’m saying I don’t know!”

“That’s as good as a rejection and you damn well know it.”

“Well, maybe this is a rejection then.” 

You stared at each other for a long time, before he played the movie again, tossed the remote to you, and stormed out of the room without another word. With the stillness and silence of the loft, the quiet volume of the TV a background noise, and you staring at where Eridan had walked off… it felt incredibly lonesome.

That was the first night you’d actually taken him up on the offer to crash on his couch.

 

\---

 

You stood next to your brother as Latula’s father walked her down the aisle, the array of bridesmaids nearly squee-ing their little hearts out.

The ceremony was being held at a open outdoor area near a church and near a  vineyard , just barely dipping into the Italian countryside. It was pretty, even though you weren’t one for the outdoors.

You looked for Eridan through the pews that’d been set up, one side for Captors and the other for Pyropes, (the  symmetry  was nonexistent, almost. While Latula’s family was not small, your family was fucking enormous and probably spread out through every damn Asian country in total). You hadn’t designated the sides, but it seemed your separate families had done it themselves.

You spotted Eridan eventually, sitting next to Karkat and Terezi, running his fingernails down the pinstripes on his violet tie. He must’ve felt your eyes on him because he looked up and scowled at you, then meaningfully dropped his gaze back down.

You looked upwards to counter him, and noticed the sky was getting suspiciously dark. You furrowed your brow and glanced at the pastor between Mituna and Latula. Latula was Christian whilst Mituna and you had grown up non-religiously, but hey, you supposed it was best Mituna let her have the wedding she wanted. You’d been tuning out most of the vows or whatever, but they must’ve been pretty well written, because you noticed the crowd looked pretty damn emotional.

The pastor said, “Latula, take Mituna’s ring and recite.”

“Mituna,” Latula started, voice wavering only slightly, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I vow to love and serve you as long as we both shall live.”

She reached out and gingerly took his hands.

“I take you with all your faults and strengths as I offer myself to you—with all my faults and strengths. I vow to help you when you need help, and turn to you when I need help. And with this ring, I take you to be my lawfully wedded husband, my constant friend, my partner-in-crime, and my love from this day forward.”

Then the pastor turned to Mituna and repeated the sentence, only flip-flopped, and he repeated what Latula had said to him.

“Now, that you have given yourselves to each other with solemn vows and the giving and receiving of rings, it is with great joy that I pronounce you husband and-,”

There was an extremely loud crack of thunder that cut the pastor off. There were some murmuring from the crowd, and then, very suddenly, it began to pour down rain. There were many outcries as the attendees tried to scurry for cover.

You watched as Latula laughed heartily, threw her arms around Mituna, and kissed him. He pulled her closer to him and clunked their forehead together. You watched them for a second, head cocked inquisitively, before you felt a tug on your arm.

“Sol!” Eridan yelled at you and that was the first time he’d addressed you properly all day, “what the hell are you doing! We’ve got to get inside!”

You looked away from your brother and now-sister-in-law and nodded, letting him drag you through the pouring rain. Women in fancy gowns ran like hell for shelter and let out shrieks worthy of  Valkyrie  warriors.

You didn’t know where the church was or where he was dragging you when you rooted your feet to the muddy ground. Eridan’s hand slipped from yours and he stumbled, then spun around.

“What are you doing?” he asked, “Come on, we have to get inside.”

“Eridan,” you said, “Slow down, we don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Of course we do!” he shouted, “The church was right around the- somewhere, okay? We have to find a roof before our suits get ruined.”

“It’s just water,” you told him, “Look, can you even see in those things?”

He rubbed the lenses of his glasses. “I can see fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m fucking positive.”

There was a bit of a silence where neither of you made a motion to move. Eridan did start shivering a little, even if the rain wasn’t all that cold.

“I’d offer you my jacket, but, uh,” you lifted up the sleeve of your equally-as-drenched blazer.

“I appreciate the thought,” he muttered, “Come on, let’s try this way.”

You followed behind him. The only noise were the squeaks of your shoes on the ever-muddying ground. Then, reluctantly, you said: “I think we should talk.”

“Don’t bother, Sol,” he said, wrapping arms around himself and rubbing the sleeves of his drenched suit, “Let’s just get inside and forget about this.”

“I feel like it’s important, okay? It’s important because it’s important to you. And last night… I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I know you don’t,” he replied, “That’s why I got pissed. So forget it.”

You let one shoulder rise and fall. You wanted to wipe the raindrops rolling down your face but you felt like it would ruin the movie climax vibe going on. “You never know, maybe...”

He stopped dead in his tracks and he turned around to face you. “Maybe, what, Sol? What is it?”

“I just…”

You stared at him for a minute, cliche as it might be to stare at him in pouring rain. What was not cliche was the fact he didn’t really look that great. His gelled hair was a mess and flattened down with water, sticking to his forehead. His suit had to be soaking wet, and you vaguely wondered how long it would take to dry both his and yours. You could barely see his eyes, what with how fogged and splattered with rain his glasses were.

He looked like absolute shit.

And, as one does when someone looks like absolute shit, you made your way towards him, gripped both sides of his face, and kissed him. Maybe that was even more cliche.

There weren’t fireworks and it wasn’t a great kiss. You were kissing Eridan Ampora in the middle of the rain at your brother’s wedding, and you felt suspiciously like a character in a bad romcom, but you didn’t mind, since that was mostly of your own doing. Your lips slipped against each other’s awkwardly and your hands couldn’t keep ahold of him too well, but he had arms around you now so it looked like you couldn’t really pull away.

“That doesn’t really answer any relationship questions I have,” Eridan said, when you broke the kiss, and his glasses were slipping down his nose but his arms were still around you so he didn’t push them back up, “but it was cute, so I’ll take it, even if the kiss was shit.”

You rolled your eyes. “Relationship questions come later. Right now, let’s sap it the fuck up.”

“Or,” he suggested, “get inside?”

“That works, too.”


End file.
